Valio Gefilus contains a range of good LGG bacteria that improve your overall health and resistance. Because of legislation we were not allowed to talk about all the good benefits our product has. So we needed to be entertaining and interesting, obey the law and especially reach those who are not generally so attentive to their personal well-being.

If we aren’t allowed to talk about the benefits – let the product prove its power. We decided to put our product to the ultimate test. We asked Ian Wright, the world-renowned traveler from Lonely Planet, to do what even toddlers know is forbidden: lick the dirtiest places in Europe. At the same time, Ian consumed our Valio products and interviewed gut health experts during his journey. We filmed this journey and documentary, The Lick-Hikers Guide to Inner Strength, was born.

We wanted to reach not only the people who were already actively interested in their overall health but also the big +25 audience, generally. We decided to document the product in use in a quite extreme and entertaining way.
We scouted the dirtiest places in Europe, like the handrails at one of the most congested subway stations, public toilets, kindergartens during flu season, etc., and invited Ian to lick their exposed surfaces.
We traveled with Ian for two weeks around Europe, including Russia. During this time, he also interviewed a range of doctors, professors and other experts on the issue of gut health, bacteria and resistance. And of course he drank Valio Gefilus with LGG bacteria.

From the beginning we decided to be honest and simply do a great documentary. In fact, none of us were certain how Ian would survive of all the bacteria he licked.
Although our content was commercial and produced by the biggest dairy company in Finland, we were able to get the whole documentary on primetime TV on the biggest channel in Finland. During the first week 200 000 Finns (population 5,4 million) had seen it. In addition, we were able to spread the message in earned media: three of the main media outlets covered the story in their journalistic content.
7000 Finns even watched the entire 22-minute documentary via the YouTube pre-roll ad before viewing their selected funny cat video.